Podcast: Country Hearts Christmas (2023)

Your Stupid Minds continues its tradition of low budget Christmas movies with wrestlers in them with Country Hearts Christmas, starring Chris Jericho and others.

Tori (Lanie McAuley) and June (Katerina Maria) are sisters seeking to become country music stars in Nashville. This was most likely set up in the previous movie Country Hearts, but that doesn’t involve Christmas so who cares? The sisters catch a big break and get a spot on a popular Christmas Eve live television show, but there’s one massive problem. They need to go to church! The women hem and haw about having to be on TV on the day before Christmas, missing key family events like church and... opening pre-Santa presents? Bear in mind, these women are adults and can still make it on Christmas Day, but that isn’t enough.

Their dad Bones (Jericho) is a former rock star who has sobered up since his rock days. He spends his days Facetiming various family members to meddle in their personal affairs, traversing the cathedral-like hallways of his cavernous McMansion, and trying to get his horses to have sex with each other.

June husband Justin (Jeff Irving) is lonely while his wife is in Nashville, drinking heavily, and having financial troubles. Why he can’t run a failing winery in Nashville with his wife is beyond us. Meanwhile Tori has a love triangle (or square? Maybe a Love Sputnik, since all the lines need to connect back to her?) with three different dudes.

We could go on about the plot forever, but I can assure you the first world travails of this extremely co-dependent family are just as boring on screen as written. There’s also a product placement for Zillow so egregious it’s basically a 30 second commercial in the middle of this movie. Enjoy!

Podcast: Hunt to Kill (2010)

Why should you listen to our latest episode? BECAUSE STONE COLD SAID SO! We’ve got 2010's Hunt to Kill starring Stone Cold Steve Austin, Eric Roberts (kinda), and various Vancouver-based character actors.

Jim Rhodes (Austin) is a U.S. Border Patrol agent about to assume a new desk job. When his partner Lee (Roberts) is killed in a botched meth lab raid (something Border Patrol does all the time), Rhodes moves to western Montana to be near a different border.

Rhodes's daughter Kim (Marie Avgeropoulos) is home on winter break and thinks her dad is cringe. When she's caught shoplifting, he must go down to the Sheriff's office to bail her out. Meanwhile, a team of the dumbest criminals of all time are betrayed by their leader (?) Lawson (Michael Hogan, Battlestar Galactica's Saul Tigh, and General Tullius from Skyrim for you Zoomers out there who love 13 year old games), who steals their stolen bonds and sets a bomb to explode. The team defuses the bomb, and now they're on the hunt to the Canadian border to catch their traitorous partner.

The team consists of the leader Banks (Gil Bellows), blonde lady Dominika (Emilie Ullerup), hacker Geary (Michael Eklund), karate guy Jensen (Gary Daniels), and hothead Crab (Adrian Holmes). To make a long story short, they go to the sheriff for info on Lawson before he sneaks across the northern border. Instead they end up killing him, kidnapping Kim, and taking Rhodes along to track Lawson. We now have a half dozen morons in the woods bickering with each other constantly, and Rhodes waiting for his opportunity to give all of these doofuses a Stone Cold Stunner and save his daughter. Everything goes south (or should I say, north) and Rhodes must resort to hunting to kill. Can I get a "hell yeah?"

Podcast: Santa with Muscles (1996)

Direct download.



Your Stupid Minds reviews another Christmas classic with Terry “Hollywood Hulk ‘The Hulkster’ Hogan” Bollea (a.k.a. Hulk Hogan) in Santa with Muscles! Hogan takes a break between exhibition bouts in Japan to film this family classic about a large man using physical violence to bond with orphans.

Blake (Hogan), during one of his regular paintballing jaunts with his personal staff, gets mistaken for a terrorist by the local sheriff (Clint Howard) and disguises himself as Santa Claus in a nearby shopping mall. After a bump on the noggin he believes he actually is Santa Claus, and holes up in a local orphanage with his elf partner (Don Stark).

After drinking milk and eating cookies with the three orphans (one played by young Mila Kunis), an evil gang of scientists led by Ebner Frost (Ed Begley Jr.) tries to take the orphanage by force in order to acquire the magic exploding crystals hidden underneath. Blake punches these guys until everyone learns the true meaning of Christmas.

Some Notes:

• Produced by The Wolf of Wall Street's own Jordan Belfort!
• For some reason the only image on the IMDb page is this autographed photo of the Hulkster with Mila Kunis giving a thumbs up.
• Clint Howard is also in this movie, making it his second appearance on the podcast this month.
• For more on Hulk Hogan, read Chris's review of 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain.
• Though we tried really hard to find a way to pay for this, it was to no avail. You can, however, watch it in its entirety on YouTube.

Podcast: Leprechaun Origins (2014)

A special Halloween episode with one of the worst movies we’ve ever reviewed! Have you ever thought “you know, I really like those Leprechaun movies with Warwick Davis, except I wish he couldn’t talk and was a monster instead of a leprechaun”? Well you’re in luck! WWE Studios acquired the franchise, cast dwarf wrestling novelty act Hornswoggle, plastered him all over the marketing materials, and then put him in a disgusting full body costume and gave him no lines. The result is a lazy generic slasher film with absolutely no remnants of the original franchise.

A "leprechaun" "played" by WWE "superstar" Hornswoggle.

On their last week visiting Ireland (which looks suspiciously like British Columbia), a group of four friends (with suspiciously Canadian accents) come upon a small town with charming locals who agree to take them to a special hiking spot. As it turns out, this hiking spot is a ruse to provide the tourists as human sacrifice for a monster terrorizing the countryside, which they insist is a leprechaun despite all appearances to the contrary. What results is a barely written series of scenes alternating between various cabins, vehicles, and forests involving running, scampering, screaming, whimpering, yelling, and crying.

Not only is the movie pure tedium, but by the end the audience is subjected to twelve (12) minutes of excruciating end credits with nary a post-credit stinger in sight. That’s $5.40 we will never see again.

Some Notes:

• The wrestler Hornswoggle is a dwarf actually dressed as a leprechaun. They simply chose not to highlight this gimmick in any way.
• Leprechaun: Origins is available to rent or buy on various streaming services, but we're not going to tell you what they are.
• TWELVE MINUTES OF CREDITS!

Direct download

Podcast: Ready to Rumble (2000)

Your Stupid Minds returns to its roots with a very special "wrestler" themed podcast as we review the 2000 buddy/road movie/wrestling commercial Ready to Rumble. David Arquette and Scott Caan play two... sanitation workers(?) that love wrestling, and when evil promoter Titus Sinclair (Joe Pantoliano) performs a classic "screwjob" to take the belt from their hero, Jimmy King (Oliver Platt), the two help to train King for his big re-match with the evil Diamond Dallas Page.


Some Notes:

• As part of the marketing campaign for the movie, David Arquette, the actor, was made WCW Champion very briefly in 2000. He lost the title back in a "triple cage" match similar to the movie's finale.
• Ready to Rumble's soundtrack could be used as a time capsule for the late 90s/early 2000s, featuring:
• TWO Kid Rock songs ("Cowboy" and "Bawitdaba")
• "My Own Worst Enemy," Lit (played twice)
• "Freestyle," P.O.D.
• "Jump Around," Everlast/House of Pain
• "How Deep is Your Love," The Bee Gees (wait, how did that get in there?)
• The story of Jimmy King being "screwed" by Titus Sinclair has several similarities to a real life issue between WCW promoter Eric Bischoff and aging star Ric Flair. Flair, a noted alcoholic, was fired for allegedly missing a show in the spring of 1998 and filed a lawsuit (in real life) against the company he had helped to build. By late 1998 he was back in WCW.
• Randy Savage and Perry Saturn (aka the bald home invasion wrestler) no longer worked for WCW by the time this movie was released. Additionally, DDP was a top babyface (good guy) when the movie came out. As of 2013, only Randy Savage (heart attack while driving) and Bam Bam Bigelow (drug overdose) have died.
• Brian Robbins, the director, has made plenty of other movies from this era that are generally reviled, including:
• The Perfect Score
• The Shaggy Dog
• Norbit
• Meet Dave
• Diamond Dallas Page seems like a really cool guy in real life, as he developed a yoga/weight loss program and has offered free assistance to troubled wrestlers like Jake the Snake Roberts and Scott Hall. His YouTube channel is here.
• Ahmet Zappa plays a rude convenience store clerk and Dweezil Zappa produced and performed DDP's entrance music.

Podcast: 12 Rounds (2009)

The podcast returns this week with a fun and carefully timed romp through New Orleans with wrestler John Cena in 12 Rounds! Cena (last seen on YSM in The Marine) plays Danny Fisher, a New Orleans detective who, after arresting terrorist Irish arms dealer Miles Jackson (Aidan Gillen), must run through twelve rounds of Grand Theft Auto-esque timed challenges in order to save his girlfriend. Directed by Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2, Deep Blue Sea), the movie bears a striking resemblance to another Die Hard movie, Die Hard: With a Vengeance.

Listen to Chris and Nick discuss the top-heavy Cena solve increasingly difficult puzzles involving exploding everything, a runaway trolley car, and a Sophie's Choice challenge with a morbidly obese security guard.




Don't forget to subscribe on iTunes or RSS. Also feel free to give us a review on iTunes. We'll love you forever for it.

Also take note of the slight site redesigns. We plan to unveil an all new logo design some time in the near future!

They Live (1988)

John Carpenter's They Live opens in a modern day (late 80s) and slightly more poverty-stricken representation of Los Angeles. Nada ("Rowdy" Roddy Piper) rides the rails from Colorado looking for work, and manages to land a construction job which allows him the opportunity to remove his shirt while making money. The job gives him enough cash to afford a reasonably sized shanty in the Hooverville down the street. He notices some suspicious activity in the church across the way, which coincides with recent hackings of local television stations. Unfortunately nobody seems very keen on a sweaty bearded man's face yelling at them, so this effort often falls upon deaf ears.

Wake up from your living consumerist dreamscape and I'll give you that Super Soaker you always wanted.

The Chaperone (2011)

Despite being a 13 time WWE/WWF world champion, Triple H has never had nearly the same success outside of the wrestling business that his old rivals The Rock and Steve Austin have achieved. And when you are behind Steve Austin in your film career, you have not accomplished the level of success necessary to be a supporting villain in The Expendables. Before this year, Triple H's non-wrestling work consisted of a handful of TV appearances basically playing himself, and one supporting villain role in Blade: Trinity. That changed in 2011, as WWE films, the production company that gave us such classics as The Marine, gave Triple H the starring role in a family comedy/all-ages heist movie The Chaperone.

Pretty well sums things up.

The Marine (2006)

Ever since Dwayne Johnson's propulsion into Hollywood stardom, the World Wresting Federation (WWE) and its domineering owner Vince McMahon have culled their ranks looking for the next The Rock. But rather than give him up to the Disneys and Universal Pictureses of the world, McMahon hopes to use his own WWE Studios to reap the rewards of his fame.

Such is the case of wrestler John Cena. Akin to a hulked out Mark Wahlberg, Cena emulated Wahlberg's Marky Mark routine and spent his early wrestling career making bank on the resemblance, short of producing his own Starz series Cortège, about the hangers-on of a super star professional wrestler. Instead, Cena begins his screen career with the 2006 film The Marine, about a beefy soldier ousted from military service whose wife is kidnapped by homicidal diamond thieves. If you base the quality of a film by the number of times a hero jumps from an exploding building, The Marine is your flick.

Stepping on the flag? For shame.

3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain (1998)

For three months in 1997, at the height of WCW's rise from second rate wrestling promotion to the premier wrestling promotion in the world, their world heavyweight champion was MIA. The year before, Hulk Hogan had electrified the wrestling world by turning heel (wrestling term for bad guy) for the first time in 15 years. To cash in on his suddenly increased marketability, Hogan, in his infinite wisdom, disappeared from television for three months to film a 3 Ninjas sequel and a third rate action movie. The Home Alone-esque 1992 original 3 Ninjas had been a hit, but two sequels in 1994 and 1995 had seen diminishing returns. Finally, after a 3 year break that saw an almost completely new cast from the first film six years earlier, 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain (3N:HNAMM) was released to enormous yawns.

Sadly, "guy in denim jacket" was held down by WCW politics
and never received a championship title match.